


in another life (I would make you stay)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Established Relationship, F/M, The Framework Universe (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 23:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14658543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Jemma wakes up in a dream.





	in another life (I would make you stay)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SapphireBlueJiyuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBlueJiyuu/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for the ever-lovely SapphireBlueJiyuu, who is another year old and has spent it being just the sweetest person. Love you, hon. <3

Jemma’s head aches. Her skin feels too tight around her bones. She’s dried out. She groans, curling into a ball around the hollow of her stomach. She needs another injection, just enough to get her through until morning and then she’ll find food and water, pretend to be a human being again. But when she opens her eyes to orient herself, the room is unfamiliar.

It’s not the lab or her cramped quarters, the only two places she goes with any regularity. This room is as dimly lit as her quarters, but it’s more open, with room enough for a chair by her bedside and-

“Oh,” she breathes, some of the tension eking out of her. She stretches on the mattress, one hand slipping under the pillow to make herself more comfortable. “I’m still asleep.”

“You’re not,” the dream sitting beside her says. “Well, technically you are but-” he sighs- “it’s complicated. You’d be able to explain it better.”

“You could try.” He’s smarter than he gives himself credit for, far more than given that he’s a figment of her subconscious. Besides, she likes the sound of his voice. “Explain it to me.”

He bends forward, a smile pulling at his lips but never reaching his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me where you think you are?”

She wrinkles her nose. She’s so cozy—this dream bed is better than anything she’s slept on since the uprising—and her brain so sluggish, but she’s accustomed to thinking when she’d rather not. Her only value to Hydra is her brain and if they have need of it at two in the morning, fresh from a REM cycle, she’s learned to adapt. A little struggle in the wee hours is better than a meeting with a compliance specialist at noon.

“My lab,” she says. That’s where she was when she gave herself the injection. Usually she’d be more discreet than that, making her way back to her quarters first, but it was a Friday evening and the labs would be empty until Monday, there was no need to wait. She has vague memories of stretching out on the sterile surface of her lab bench while the drugs flowed into her system, the carefully concocted SNDRI she manufactures regularly. Hydra has their own uses for it but seems content to allow her her recreational use, so long as she remains productive otherwise. Likely they’re aware that without it, she wouldn’t be productive at all.

“I’m sleeping,” she says, reaching out for him. His hand catches her arm and in return she twists hers to catch his. “My body is burning off the last of the drug and the increased dopamine is giving me a lovely dream.”

“About an underground bunker?” he asks, his lips quirking in that way they do when he’s especially charmed by her. Her heart twists at the sight of it. She’s missed that smile.

“About you, silly.” She pulls at him until his face is close enough she can touch his stubbly cheek. She sighs. “I love you.” She’s spent so long holding those words back, regretting all her missed chances to let them out, it’s a weight off her chest to say them now.

The confession seems to startle him. She doesn’t know why. _She_ knows she loves him. Even if she refused to admit it before, she certainly couldn’t after- after he-

“I miss you,” she says, her voice thick. “So much.”

His mouth opens. She’s rendered him speechless, rather funny considering how much he used to enjoy driving her to senseless babble; her subconscious has a nice sense of irony. Before he can come up with a suitably saccharine response, the door opens.

“Simmons!”

_Agent_ _Johnson_ _._

In a heartbeat Jemma is sitting up, her back pressed into the corner of the wall, legs drawn up to her chest as if that will protect her. She barely notices the large man entering the room, her focus is fixed completely on Johnson. The disgust and censure that usually twists that pretty face is missing entirely, replaced by a joy that fades swiftly to concern.

“Agent Simmons?” the large man asks, his voice gentle enough to pull her attention, briefly, away. It’s the Patriot. Yes, even carefully sequestered assets such as Jemma know of the Patriot. She never dreamed of meeting him face to face, however. “I think you’re gonna wanna make yourself comfortable for this.”

“No one’s gonna hurt you,” Johnson says, easing onto the end of the bed.

Jemma curls her toes in. But her fear of Johnson doesn’t stop her brain from working and what it tells her is that this _doesn’t make sense_. Johnson is a loyal agent of Hydra. So loyal in fact that it’s rumored she killed her own father on Daniel Whitehall’s orders. What could she possibly be doing with the _Patriot_ of all people? Jemma tries to make sense of the scene, her eyes bouncing from one to the other—though never leaving Johnson for more than a fraction of a second—and then to-

Her heart leaps into her throat. Grant.

He’s here. He’s sitting in that chair still, on the edge of it now, staring at her like he wants to comfort her.

But that’s not-

He’s-

Tears sting at her eyes and her arms tighten around her legs.

“I think we’d better explain,” the Patriot says, still so gently. And Johnson does.

 

\-----

 

They’re from another world. Grant and Johnson. Hydra has kidnapped several of their friends, brainwashed them to make them forget their own world, and enslaved them. Grant and Johnson are here to rescue them. Johnson apparently caught sight of Jemma in the lab after getting the data she needed from Hydra’s global database and “couldn’t help” but rescue her on her way out. It seems they’re friends in Johnson’s world. Jemma tries not to appear visibly discomfited by that revelation.

It helps that the Patriot delivers a second, more shocking one immediately after: the resistance has had plans to rescue her for some time. Grant wanted her out.

She doesn’t ask if she’s why he was- how Hydra found out that he-

She doesn’t ask.

She also doesn’t look at Grant—the _other Grant—_ if she can help it. It’s one thing to indulge in a fanciful dream, another to torment herself with brutal reality. Which is why she’s grateful when the Patriot’s suggestion for how she might help the two interdimensional travelers takes her far away from the both of them. Unfortunately, her reprieve only lasts until an hour after the base’s mandatory curfew.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the other Grant’s voice is like a crack across the icy stillness of the lab.

Jemma jumps, understandably startled. The door of the refrigeration unit swings shut with a soft shush. “Working,” she says.

“In the middle of the night? When you’re supposed to be in bed?” He’s closer now. In the span of a few sentences he’s traversed the length of the lab. He’s close enough now that the light spilling through the glass of the refrigerators allows her to see his familiar features. That stabbing pain in her heart returns, so much sharper now that she knows he’s _real_. Real and yet not, not for her.

“I could say the same to you,” she says pertly. When she attempts to move away, he blocks her.

“You were looking for something,” he says, accusation turning the words into a weapon. That’s good, better. Hearing him talk like this when her Grant was always gentle and kind, always so aware of the fragility lurking beneath her hard exterior, it makes it easier to differentiate the two of them.

It also drives the pain deeper. She has to shift her weight until she can feel the nearest refrigeration unit at her shoulder, otherwise she fears she’ll lose her balance.

“Was it for this?” he demands, grabbing her arm to expose the marks on her inner elbow.

She jerks back, her opposite shoulder slamming painfully against the units handle when she stumbles away.

The fury lighting his eyes fades, replaced by fear. “Are you all right? Did I hurt you?”

She cradles her arm to her chest. “I’m fine.” She lets the biting words stand alone rather than explain to him that his touch did anything _but_ hurt. She knows that her Grant isn’t coming back. She was forced to witness first hand how Hydra deals with a traitor of his caliber and has spent months consoling herself he wasn’t brainwashed instead. The idea of passing a glassy-eyed Grant in the halls, hearing those empty words from his mouth, it would have killed her.

But this Grant is alive and, like everything else about him, his touch his precisely like her Grant’s. Her body doesn’t seem to care about the dimensional disparity.

“Why do you do it?” he asks, the words tight. He’s looking at her folded arms, not at her.

“Because it feels good,” she says with a weak shrug.

She’s startled him again and has to laugh at the look on his face. It’s weak and dry, not at all the way her Grant made her laugh, but that is one more thing they have in common: they’re the only two men in seven years to draw laughter out of her.

She backs away until her thighs hit a stool. “When Hydra rose up, I was at the Academy.” She assumes he’ll know the place, since Johnson insisted their worlds’ histories were identical up until the Cambridge Incident. “At first they demanded we swear loyalty to Hydra. Anyone who refused was put to death. Unless we were deemed too valuable.”

“You were valuable,” he says softly.

She nods once. “By the time I was imprisoned at the Triskelion, Hydra had my parents in custody. I was told that either I would work or they would suffer.” She can still feel the cold dread of that day, the way the sight of her parents, bound and gagged, numbed the pain of even her worst injuries. After all this time, the feeling is almost a comfort.

“Do you know where they are?” The urgency in his voice pulls her from her reminiscing. He’s come close again and is nearly looming over her while he shakes with a startling intensity. “Maybe we can still reach them.”

Oh, that is so Grant, isn’t it? The cold melts a little against the warmth in her chest.

“My parents are dead,” she says softly, as though he’s the one who needs comfort. “My mother died less than a year after the uprising and my father died-” she thinks, tries to remember the exact date but comes up short. It was spring, she knows. She remembers the agent who delivered the news was wearing a colorful blouse and skirt when not long before everyone had been wearing sweaters. “Nearly four years ago,” she decides, figuring it’s close enough.

That sends him away. He backs up a full two steps at her pronouncement. “And you still worked for them? After they killed them?” She can’t read his voice at all. If he’s disgusted with her, he doesn’t show it. But he must be; she’s disgusted with herself.

Her gaze drops to her laced hands. Her knuckles have gone white, hiding the mounting tremors she can feel under her skin. She’s not so bad off that it’s constant—it has only been little more than a day, after all—but she can feel the beginnings of anxiety pushing her to find a substitute for her personal formula.

“I’m afraid I lost the will to fight back long before I lost them.” She lets that sit a moment, allows her shame and guilt to eat her up until she can’t take it anymore. “I had a little bit of happiness for a while, someone to brighten my days now and then, but Hydra took him too earlier this year.”

“Me.”

She meets his eyes. There’s no censure, only understanding and a familiar sort of longing. “Him,” she says, both an agreement and correction. “So that’s why I…” Feeling a little more steady with him in her frame of vision, she gestures to her arm. The talking seems to help too, and perhaps that’s why she asks, “What about you? Why are you sneaking around?”

“Couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about you—my version of you.”

In the span of five words her heart leaps and deflates. She doesn’t examine why. “Yes, Agent Johnson said I exist in your world.”

He chuckles. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel about her.”

She ducks her head sheepishly. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to anyone with eyes. What’d she do to you anyway?”

She shakes her head. Johnson blames her for Grant and that’s a subject Jemma would prefer to leave behind—as much as it’s possible while talking to his double.

“If it helps, you two really are friends in my world. She’d never hurt you.”

“Really?” Not that his Johnson hasn’t acted as though they are, but Jemma still finds it hard to believe, even this many hours later.

“Oh yeah, you’re like sisters. She _hated_ me at first.”

“What do you mean?”

For a moment, he looks like a deer caught in headlights, but he recovers quickly, slipping on that cool, confident mask that’s surely saved his life countless times. “When you and I…” He waves his hand between them and she can fill in the blanks.

“Ah.” She doesn’t know how she feels, knowing that she and Grant found one another across multiple universes. Relief? A warm-hearted sense of kinship with her other self? Jealousy? That last one, definitely.

“Yeah. I’m not very much like your Grant, was never too good at _being_ good. Nobody trusted me, most of ’em still don’t.”

“But she does,” Jemma says.

Grant’s eyes rove carefully over her face, perhaps looking for similarities to his own Jemma. “I don’t know,” he says in that falsely light tone she knows means he’s trying to hide true honesty behind a cavalier attitude. “Lately I’ve got the idea she might regret being with me.”

“No,” she says it so immediately that she surprises the both of them. But she’s right, she knows she is. “She doesn’t.”

His mouth quirks up, somehow nothing at all like his earlier smile in that sickroom. “You’re so sure?”

“Yes,” she says, meeting his flippant shield with sincerity. “There is no version of me that could ever regret you.”

She’s shaken him. More than when she sleepily confessed her love. More than when she admitted to serving Hydra out of apathy. For a long time he only stares, drinking in the sight of her with an intensity that should be embarrassing, but Jemma finds herself heartened by it. It feels good to be seen again by someone who cares, even if it is for a different, hopefully less broken version of herself.

Finally he shakes it off. “Well there’s no version of me that’s gonna stand by and let you shoot up. Your sobriety starts today, come on.”

She goes with him because she didn’t truly think SHIELD would have the necessary drugs in stock anyway. She won’t be able to sleep at all tonight—likely she only slept through last night because Johnson knocked her out to get her out of the Triskelion without a fight—but that’s for the best. She can use the hours to search for his missing friends. The sooner he’s gone, the sooner she can get back to her self-destructive slide without the specter of her lover casting judgment.

 

\-----

 

After she wakes up, after they escape the drilling platform, after they’re all safely on-board the Zephyr—with an Inhuman Aida and a still-sleeping Mack as well—Jemma goes directly into Grant’s arms. They support her perfectly, more steady and sure than they ever were in that horrible dream.

The others move around them, quietly allowing them what little space they can in lieu of true privacy. She knows she should help Lincoln with Mack, and surely Fitz will need a shoulder to cry on after facing the darkest parts of his own psyche, but Grant is _alive_. His death was nothing but a nightmare, one that still feels horribly real.

“It’s okay,” he says. She’s on her toes so that his face can rest in the curve of her neck. One of his arms supports her lower back while the other rubs a soothing circuit up and down her spine. “You’re safe. They can’t get you here.”

His words in the Playground’s lab come back to her and a swell of pity, deep enough to wrench her gut, overwhelms her.

She turns her head as far as she’s able, kissing the first bit of him she finds before whispering directly in his ear, “It wasn’t you.”

His arms tighten.

“It _wasn’t_ ,” she insists. Much as she hates to, she forces her hands between them, pushing until she can see his face and then gripping the front of his jacket to keep him from letting her go, as it’s clear from the heartsick look on his face he expects her to walk away. “My regret wasn’t _you_ , it was _us_.”

His expression says that makes no difference.

“We spent so long on opposite sides, both of us fighting our feelings and sneaking around. I regretted that wasted time, so the Framework put us on the same side from the start.” While making them both unwilling agents of Hydra wasn’t exactly an improvement, it did technically fulfill the program’s goals.

She pulls at Grant until he sinks against her, his forehead resting on hers. “I love you,” she says—because she needs to say it again for the first time to make up for the mess of the Framework, because that weaker version of herself wasted her chances and _that_ was greater than any regret she felt in any life.

Grant’s arms wrap around her again, his embrace more cherishing than desperate this time. “I love you too,” he says.

 


End file.
